Just what is it with Matthew Vaughn and spy movies? I mean in a career that started off very firmly in the British gangster movie trend (he produced Guy Ritchie’s first two films before making his directorial debut with Layer Cake) and then veered into back to back comic book adaptations (X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass, Kingsman), Vaughn has since made three, comedic spy movies on the trot with the ever expanding Kingsman universe.
Well, make that four, because with rainbow-coloured romantic comedy, Argylle, the director has delivered yet another quirky, cartoonish movie set firmly in the world of secret agents and international espionage. Armed with a glittery cast and more gaudy action sequences than you can shake a cat at, can Vaughn manage to keep this film from merely being yet another retread of everything the director has been working on for the past decade?
Painfully introverted single novelist Elly Conway is quite content to hammer out installments for her wildly successful spy series, Argylle, and snuggle up to her faithful cat, Alfie – but when she hits a writer’s block when trying to find a satisfying ending for her fifth book, she desides to hop on a train and go visit her supportive mother for some advice. However, while on the train, she is approached by over-friendly fan, Aidan who first makes her uncomfortable with his snobby habits and the makes her alive when a bunch of strangers suddenly attack her.
It turns out that Aidan is actually a spy and in an unbelievable act of coincidence, all of Elly’s Argylle books have been usually adept at predicting the geo-political landscape and thus has called out an actual super-secret, off-the-books organisation called the Division for going rogue – which it actually has.
Determining that if Elly can predict that, she can also work out where the evidence is, grumbling Director Ritter has sent out his best men to bring her in while all Elly has to protect her is Aidan and Alfie, whom she has brought along on this mad chase in her back pack. However, once she gets into the swing of things thanks to Aiden’s prowess as ass-kicking and a helpful lesson as how to best crush a skull, the pair eventually make their way back to ex-CIA deputy director Alfred Solomon to work out where the offending hard drive is that’ll end this nightmare once and for all.
But there’s other things that are going on that Elly can’t explain. Why is it when the chaos gets to it’s most frenzied does she start actually seeing the form of her buff, flat-top sporting fictional character, Agent Argylle, who pops up to give her sage advice? How can she predict what shit spies get up to so accurately, and most of all, who is the real Agent Argylle?
It really does seem that Matthew Vaughn is trying to single-handedly bring back the tone of the later Roger Moore James Bond movies back from the dead in a world where Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt and, yes, Daniel Craig’s James Bond have made the spy genre a tense and serious place, but in an effort to keep his obsession alive, the director has resorted to Marvel’s old trick of switching up genres within the genre you’re playing with – after all, wasn’t X-men: First Class itself a sixties-set spy movie with superpowers?
While prequel The King’s Man amused itself by dicking around with history and the First World War, Argylle chooses to go the same route as Romancing The Stone or The Lost City by utilising that old trope of the single, introverted, female writer who finds that the fictitious worlds she’s created for her books start spilling out into the real world to sweep her up into a thrilling adventure.
So once again we launch into the massively far-fetched realms of the ludicrous Matthew Vaughn spy movie, but while the Kingsman movies went out of their way to flip the script by being cheekily crude and displaying a weirdly good-natured attitude toward excessive violence, the director drops the potty mouth and colourful brutality to offer something up something way more innocent and sweet much like he did in his 2007 fantasy film, Starlight. However, one of Argylle’s many and regrettable issues is that without that comically spiteful bite of a Kingsman or a Kick-Ass, the movie seems weirdly disjointed for such a happy-go-lucky story.
While the endearingly mumsy Bryce Dallas Howard and the typically laconic Sam Rockwell have some gentle charisma as a humourously mismatched pair and the movie features plot twists so twisty they’re liable to give anyone whiplash, the movie’s jokey, cartoonish tone strangely works against itself. For example, the visualized world of Argylle is obviously and grotesquely exaggerated with impossible stunts, offensively attractive people (Henry Cavill, John Cena and Dua Lipa all mugging for all they’re worth) and suave one liners abound – but the problem is, that’s pretty much what the real world is like in the movie too, with the tone, colour pallet and action sequences only being slightly toned down by comparison. Also, while all the Argylle related stuff is fully explained at the end, it doesn’t stop it from being overly confusing and a little annoying after a while, but aside from some glaringly plastic looking CGI (a regular bug bear of Vaughn movies), the movie’s real problem is that at an astounding two hours and nineteen minutes, it’s absolutely too long for what essentially is a breezy, action comedy.
Now, to try and approach the cat-shapped elephant in the room, a lot of the promo stuff for Argylle has bigged up that there’s a huge twist in play, and while I will refrain from being an asshole who spills the tea and ruins the fun, I will say this: it actually isn’t anything you haven’t seen before and draws heavily from such films as Romancing The Stone, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Knight And Day. Also, instead of bringing the chaos of the plot into focus, instead actively makes it crazier and the subsequent twists and counter twists that follow soon either get confusing or just proves to be three or four rug pulls too far.
On the plus side, if you just release yourself into Argylle’s randomness, it does prove to be a genuinely sweet, if aggressively messy, action romcom that has more ideas than it knows what to deal with. Another aspect is that the action – while almost unconscionably silly – is admittedly imaginative and includes such visual wonders as a gun fight/dance sequence adorned with multi coloured clouds of teargas and an audacious ice skating on oil moment may stretch the visual effects way beyond breaking point, but it scores legit points for originality.
If you don’t take it too seriously, Vaughn’s attempt at a second silly spy series is funny and somewhat cute – however, when the end credits come, Vaughn chooses not to wrap anything up too much and leaves you with more questions than answers that hint at sequels, spin-offs and combined universes aplenty. The problem is, is Argylle: Book One a second chapter anyone is going to want to read?
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